Odds 'n Ends

We are 16 cm away from setting the all-time snow record for Ottawa!!! That's about 6 inches of snow, for my American readers. 6 inches!!! We had snow yesterday, which thankfully got washed away in the rain later, about an inch of white stuff fell. We're so close now.....just one little storm and all this snow, the piles of snow everywhere still, would be worth it!!

I went book shopping today - a tiny used bookstore near my work had a 'liquidation sale', which turns out they are offering 25% off their sale price to reduce stock only. It's a mostly French bookstore, but since it is close to big government building (my building is one of two others further down the road), there is a selection of English books. I found 4! April shopping begun:
Two Penguin classics -
-Njal's Saga (trans by Magnus Magnusson). I'm collecting these. I am fascinated by the Norse culture, in part because York in England where i lived was settled by the Vikings in 800 AD, after the Romans built a settlement there. York takes its name from Yorvik, the old Viking name for the town. Every year there are re-enactments of various battles in and around York, including a Viking battle. There is also a fascinating Viking museum set up under a street in center York, where a large - one of the largest finds in England - of Viking life was found. York is layers upon layers of cultures, one of many reasons I love it so much. So I'm reading Norse sagas partly to understand Norse culture (and its effect on the British Isles when they came), partly because Tolkien built his Elvish language and wrote his sagas based on the Norse myths, and because I love old adventure stories and history!
-The Mabinogion, the Welsh medieval prose stories. My family ancestry is Welsh (among other countries) and I want to learn more about Welsh culture and history and literature. I also love Celtic names and myths, and this is one of the original Welsh sources for these.
-E. Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle - I honestly believe I have not read a book by this acclaimed children's fantasy writer, and i've decided to change that! Plus, the book comes with illustrations, so my daughter will have pictures to look at while i read it to her.
- Last, but not least - China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. I've wanted this book for so long, but never came across the paperback, and lo! there it was! So it joins my pile of TBR books immediately. I am so excited, this was a real find, and the best thing (other than finding these books) is that none have cracked spines! They are in excellent shape!

*Sigh* now I'm going to read Inkheart and see how quickly I fall asleep. At least Emily agrees with me that this is not the great read everyone makes it out to be, so I'm not the only one. I'm disappointed - I'm halfway through, and I really want to like this book! i will blog about it when I'm done. I will also be doing a follow-up blog to my Men of Jane Austen vote, when the second part of Sense and Sensibility is over next Sunday. So it's not too late to go vote at my blog post Emma
and cast your vote for your favourite lead actor in a Jane Austen production. At last count, Colin Firth (Darcy) was edging Jeremy Northam (Knightly)......

I will also do a quick follow-up blog to my fairy tale, since I had such a great response to my question on what's your favourite fairy tale Thank you so much, everyone, for responding! And it's not too late for those who are still pondering....
But I'm too tired tonight. Happy reading, everyone!

more snow! and guess what I'm reading......

Guess what I am reading? If you guessed something to do with Veronica Mars, you'd be right! Neptune Noir, edited by Rob Thomas, the creator, writer, and producer of Veronica Mars. It is a collection of essays written by people who love the show, in various capacities (psychologists, teachers, writers, and fans of the show), and includes an introduction by Rob Thomas. His introduction is worth the price of the book, for he writes of how he broke into Hollywood TV land initially with great success, and then had a period of 5 years when nothing sold, nothing was picked up, and he had to write here and there for other shows before Veronica Mars was made.
What I find so interesting and food for thought is that Rob initially was a high school teacher and teen novelist, writing several books for teenagers before breaking into television with Cupid (a very short-run but delightful tv series some time ago). He describes how he initially had the idea about a teen detective, "a boy who becomes ostracized by his peers when his sheriff father botches a murder investigation of one of his classmates." The idea was sold as a book idea, but he didn't write it then, and eventually, over time, the idea morphed into a teen girl, and the boy became her father. Thus the roots of Veronica Mars is in a novel, and I can't help thinking that this is one of the things that underlays how good the show is. Of course, the story arcs, characters, and dialogues are all a result of the creative people who worked on the show from 2004-2007, not Thomas himself, but he oversaw each season and wrote some of the episodes, as well as produced the three seasons. I can't help but think that that novelist's sense of drama and character development is a large part of the success of Veronica Mars. And in case you hadn't guessed or heard, Veronica Mars is very noir, including Veronica's voice-overs as part of the narrative in each show, her comments on what she is doing providing clues to herself as well as the people around her. It is very Chandler-esque, and it succeeds wonderfully, even though we don't commonly associate females with the tough loner/outsider role that characterizes the hero/PI of noir mysteries. Veronica is a loner and outsider, and the series shows how she became that way, and yet, she is still capable of making friends and of loving, and the show is filled with humour and wry sarcasm and most of all Veronica's indefatigable sense of survival. She doesn't give up, she finds a way to go on. And she wants to make sense of the world around her, she wants to understand why. This I very much relate to - I've been accused of asking too many questions by people around me! It's not meant to be an invasion of privacy (for Veronica it is, but she is a PI whereas I am not!), I just want to understand why people do what they do. I want to know what motivates people.
So.....when I showed my husband that I had bought another book yesterday, his face fell until I pointed out I was reading again! and yes, I am still obsessed with VM.......first season finally arrived, so I am rewatching to see everything I missed the first time I saw it, especially now that I know how it all ends. In terms of continuity and referencing to other episodes, this is one of the best shows I've seen for doing it.
I'll write a final conclusion when I'm done the book, but meantime it is very enjoyable and gives a sense of how much thought other people have put into why they love it so much.


Well, we had our second snowfall in three days today. Between 25 -30 cm fell today. After freezing rain and 5 cm of snow on Monday, we have now reached a milestone: WE ARE AT THE NUMBER 2 POSITION FOR TOTAL SNOWFALL IN A SEASON!!!!! Yes, I had to capitalize that........not since 1971 have we seen this much snowfall! We still have a way to go to catch up - about 90 cm of snow. My thinking is, if we have to do this much shovelling, then we might as well go all the way and try to break the record! so bring it on! there is still three weeks of March to go......right, now you get the idea of what we talk about in the winter here in Canada....the cold and the snow! Has anyone noticed the daylight lasting longer??? I have, and I am so thrilled to leave work at 5 pm and it's still sunny out! (when the sun shines, that is)..... I no longer feel like a vampire!!!